The answer is somewhere in the middle and neither of us know exactly how much information he has. But I will say that different captains have varying degrees of knowledge about the activities of their crew members. And even when captains are collecting regular tribute, they often don't know where this tribute money is exactly coming from.SonnyBlackstein wrote: ↑Sat May 13, 2023 3:43 pmI would disagree. He's a witness. Every made guy would've had his rackets on record. As a direct (?) witness his word on the stand should be sufficient to prosecute every made guy in his crew for crimes they kick up to him.gohnjotti wrote: ↑Sat May 13, 2023 3:02 amDoes he have enough information worth prosecuting over? I'm sure he's pointing the feds in the right direction but I don't think they can rely on an ailing old captain as the sole basis for indictments. For instance, when Tommy Gioeli's captain Paul Bevacqua flipped, he wore a wire for a year but died shortly afterwards so most of those arrested due to his recordings got off very lightly.SonnyBlackstein wrote: ↑Sat May 13, 2023 1:53 am Have to belive a Capo gave up more than just this bull$$$t racket.
In with the admin. Would've had a crew, knew their games, associates etc etc. Would DOUBT he's a one trick pony
I think I'm correct in this but may be wrong.
For example, Bill Cutolo's crew was incredibly tight-knit and tribute payments were a way of life. Actually, it worked more in the sense that most crew members owed money to Cutolo. However, Cutolo still had no idea how much his right-hand Joe Campanella was earning, and kept Cutolo in the dark about his medical fraud schemes that he started in the late 1990s. Cutolo may have known about crew member's loansharking endeavors, but that was only because he was the one fronting the money. As soon as crew members, such as John Floridia, were able to save up money of their own to loan out, they kept it as secret as they could. This secrecy wasn't limited to Campanella and Floridia; misreporting your income is way of life for Mafia underlings, and we can expect that it went on throughout Cutolo's crew.
On the opposite end of the spectrum are crews like Dino Calabro's. I'm referring to the crew made for him by Gioeli in 2000, rather than the Bay Parkway Boys. Calabro had Andre D'Apice in his crew during the same timeframe that D'Apice was driving around with Teddy Persico Jr. trying to whack Craig Marino. I highly doubt Calabro knew about that, or about D'Apice's loansharking activities and whatever other rackets he had going on. There was also Gary Gugliaro, Vincent LoCicero, Mickey Souza, Vincent DeMartino. Calabro knew almost nothing about his underlings' activities, only when he was called in for sitdowns to represent his soldiers in whatever beef they had.
What little info Calabro had on his crew members was not enough to see any of them indicted for it. D'Apice was nabbed by Kenji Gallo's undercover work, Souza was arrested in '06 (before Calabro's cooperation), DeMartino was arrested for the Campanella shooting, and Gugliaro and LoCicero were never arrested. Souza did testify that he "kicked up to" Calabro but Calabro did not mention any knowledge of Souza's illegal activity aside from when he was called in to represent him during sit-downs. It's also interesting that none of Souza's information was ever used in the Calabro prosecution. I would say that evidences what little he knew about Calabro's illegal activities, despite Calabro assisting him in certain sitdowns and union affairs.
Reynold Maragni's crew is another interesting case, because it's a captain trying (apparently unsuccessfully) to find out the rackets of his crew members. I don't know all of who was in Maragni's crew, but he was tape-recorded bemoaning the fact that family members in Florida were operating on their own, without the administration knowing what they were involved in. And after Maragni's arrest, the only indictments he secured were the failed prosecution of Tom Farese and Pat Truglia. And that prosecution wasn't made possible because of Maragni's extensive knowledge of Farese's scheme; that prosecution was only possible because Maragni went undercover and tried to do business with Farese.
The knowledge that a captain might have about his crew members rackets would probably not be sufficient for an arrest. What I said earlier in this thread was that his information would be a good start. Grand jury investigations, etc.
The Bevacqua case is also different because he made tape-recordings, which allowed prosecutors to start mounting cases against certain crew members, such as Frank Politi. Gang Land reported Ferrara has reported one conversation for the FBI this year - I don't know if he did any last year, but if he hasn't been actively recording his crew members then feds are already at a huge disadvantage.SonnyBlackstein wrote: ↑Sat May 13, 2023 1:53 am Your Bevacqua example is different as he died and couldn't testify, and be cross examined so I don't think is relevenat?
Why Bevacqua is relevant is because his death seriously affected the government's ability to prosecute the administration as well as crew members like Frank Politi. They all got off on cushy plea deals, particularly people Politi whose case (if I recall correctly) was based almost entirely off of Bevacqua's recordings. I don't know much about Ferrara but Gang Land has called him "ailing" and referred to his ongoing heart problems. If the government wanted to mount low-level RICO charges against his crew members based on Ferrara's testimony alone, they need to be confident that Ferrara will live out the next two-to-three years. Not only live them out, but be healthy enough to fly to New York and testify, which is something Ferrara will undoubtedly try to avoid at all costs anyways. In fact, now that I think about it, the feds are going to have a tough time getting Ferrara to testify in any case aside from this one. Informants typically don't testify after they've been sentenced, unless they have some sort of vendetta against their former pals.
Not to mention, prosecutors haven't had the best track record using one bad guy to catch another. It's very difficult when your sole witness is not the victim, but is actually more of a criminal (on paper) than the people he's testifying against. The last ten years have seen some big courtroom upsets like the Gioeli verdict, the Vinny Asaro verdict, the Farese trial, the Cammarano trial, etc.